Biblical Studies Carnival נז (November 2010)

Each month, the Biblical Studies Carnival showcases the most thought-provoking biblioblogging (biblical studies blogging) from scholars, students and keen amateurs. This is Biblical Studies Carnival 57, that is, Carnival נז from NZ.

Academy, Biblioblogging and Handy Hints

Conference Time

November saw the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion (Oct 30-Nov 1), The American Schools of Oriental Research (Nov 17-20), The Society of Biblical Literature (Nov 20-23), and the Evangelical Theological Society (Nov 17-19) – each held in Atlanta, Georgia. I have included blog posts on individual papers within the relevant sections below, but a few items are worth a mention from the get go. If the old adage that “ye shall know them by their conference stands” is indeed true, guess which conference boasted the “Old Earth Creation Society,” “The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” (with the promise that they “explain biblically God’s good design for manhood and womanhood”), “The Archaeology of Miracles,” the Answers in Genesis “Creation Museum,” the “Apologetics Study Bible“, and MatthewFlannagan? Jim West (Zwinglius Redivivus) has the photographic evidence from … ETS. Things at SBL weren’t quite in that league, but Roland Boer (Stalin’s Moustache) observes that book stalls which in earlier years had been hidden in the shadows were now occupying center-stage. With his tongue firmly in cheek (metaphorically speaking), Roland refers to the prominence of “those wonderfully broadminded presses such as Intervarsity Press (IVP), Baylor, Baker, Zondervan and Hendrickson … who make Attila the Hun seem like a Marxist.” Similarly, Rebecca Lesses (Mystical Politics) points to “the increased presence of explicitly confessional panel sessions at the SBL, usually organized by outside groups … sessions organized by the Society for Pentecostal Studies, the Society of Christian Ethics, the Institute for Biblical Research (six total sessions), the Adventist Society for Religious Studies, the GOCN Forum on Missional Hermeneutics, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and the Academy of Homiletics.” Rebecca also notes that the IVP-sponsored Tom Wright lecture for the Institute for Biblical Research “was preceded by scripture reading and prayer.” As Rebecca concludes, “it is time for the SBL to dissociate itself from such groups and reaffirm its commitment to scriptural study beyond confessional boundaries.” John Hobbins (Ancient Hebrew Poetry) makes a playful response to Rebecca.

On its events page, the University of Bristol announces a interdisciplinary colloquium to be held on Friday 17 December with the intriguing title, Deception and the Bible. The colloquium will “consider the relationship between falsehood, Bible, scholarship, and culture.” Enquiries about attendance can be made via the site.

Academic Biblical Studies versus Faith

Roland Boer (in a Bible and Interpretation op-ed) issues a further offensive in the ongoing Two Hundred Years War between academic and theological biblical scholars, together with a couple of related posts on his blog, Stalin’s Moustache – here and here. [Just to recap a little: Roland’s piece follows a long line of responses to Hector Avalos’ initial provocation, The End of Biblical Studies (2007), which was first responded to by folk such as Philip Davies (here and here), Alan Lenzi, and James Crossley, was then followed by a rejoinder by Avalos, a further response by Jim West, before the whole debate was rekindled by a volume of essays from Equinox, Secularism and Biblical Studies(2010) edited by Roland himself (and including a contribution from Avalos), which provoked Niels Peter Lemche‘s reply, provoking responses to Lemche from Avalos, Deane Galbraith, and Tim Bulkeley – bearing in mind that all of these exchanges were preceded by Jacques Berlinerblau’s 2005 book, The Secular Bible, and opinions on the SBL forum from Berlinerblau (“The Unspeakable in Biblical Scholarship“) and Michael V. Fox (“Scholarship and Faith in Bible Study“), now included in Secularism and Biblical Studies, which also provoked an extensive and fiery discussion – and which all goes back, at least in this most recent incarnation of the debate, to Philip Davies’ suggestion in his 1995 book, Whose Bible Is It Anyway? that academic biblical studies be firmly distinguished from theologically grounded scriptural studies.] But back to Roland Boer, who comes out shooting against both “sides” to the debate, but especially against Lemche’s latest contribution. Boer’s best point is that the old-fashioned historical critical approach which attempts to do purportedly objective analysis before considering so-called secondary matters – such as postcolonialism, gender, feminism, etc, not to mention the whole material circumstances of the production of historical criticism – is blind to the interests which it is nonetheless serving. And Roland suggests that, in Lemche’s own Denmark, the Church remains one of the largest of those interests.

On the same topic, Peter Enns (a time to tear down | A Time to Build Up) posts the audio recording of the 14th annual Silvers Visiting Scholar Program, University of Pennsylvania (Oct 25, 2010), entitled, “The Challenge of Reading the Bible Today: Can the Bible be read both Critically and Religiously? Jewish, Catholic and Protestant Perspectives.” The answer they came up with is fairly obvious from the last five words of that title. But if you want to have a listen to Marc Brettler (Jewish), Peter Enns (Protestant), Daniel J. Harrington (Catholic), and Rabbi Jeffrey Tigay (neutral moderator), here’s the iTunes link or the mp3s (Part 1, Part 2).

Christian Origins

The Gospels and Jesus

Rebecca Lesses (Mystical Politics) advertises the 2010 Annual Holocaust Lecture at Ithaca College (Nov 9) by Susannah Heschel, a lecture which examines the conception of the Aryan Jesus held by pro-Nazi biblical scholars. Heschel concludes that Nazi biblical scholarship is “not simply … a response to political developments, nor simply … an outgrowth of struggles within the field of Christian theology” but instead, that the work of Nazi biblical scholars indicates “underlying affinities between racism and Christian theology, affinities they recognized and promoted.” Rebecca promises a podcast of the talk is to come on her blog, once she masters the technology.

Adam Kotsko (An und für sich) provides a copy of his AAR paper, “Žižek and the Excremental Body of Christ,” which examines Žižek’s theology of the cross. Adam discusses Žižek’s understanding of the Christian God as a God who “freely identified himself with his own shit” (Parallax View, 187) and the ethical implications of such an understanding, which, as Adam wryly notes, “I am sure will not be included in any Christian ethics courses any time soon.”

Mark D. Roberts (Beliefnet) gives his interpretation of various Christological titles: the Wisdom titles (Parts 1, 2, and 3), “The Son of God,” “The Son of Man” (Parts 1 and 2), and “Son of God” (Parts 1 and 2). In response, Jim Davila (PaleoJudaica) points out some Wisdom material Mark might also have covered, and notes his agreements and disagreements concerning the two Christological titles.

Tony Burke (Apocryphicity) reviews Andreas J. Köstenberger’s and Michael J. Kruger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity (Crossway, 2010) in four parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4). Tony rightly draws attention to the highly conservative and apologetic nature of this book, which adopts a sometimes conspiratorial “language of alarm” concerning scholarship into the non-canonical Christian literature. Although in one part of the book the authors claim to base their position on “logical” argument, this claim is undermined entirely in other parts of the book where the authors claim that their scholarly opponents are driven by demonic “forces”! Clearly Köstenberger and Kruger fail to meet some of the minimum standards of what constitutes academic scholarship.

Phillip Long (Reading Acts) provides brief summaries of papers on Luke-Acts at ETS on the topics of historiography, border studies, postcolonial and feminist approaches (well, dismissive of such approaches), and the prologue to Acts.

Mark Goodacre (NT Pod) asks, “What did Paul know about Jesus?” Did he know anything about the Jesus who lived in Nazareth? Or was Jesus just a heavenly figure for Paul? And, most importantly, in respect of “1 Corinthians,” should we say “One Corinthians” or “First Corinthians”? Mark answers all these questions and more in his examination of some of the earthly Jesus tradition which Paul includes in his letters, in this podcast (13:53).

Matthew D. Montonini (New Testament Perspectives) interviews James Ware, author of Synopsis of the Pauline Letters in Greek and English (Baker, 2010), a work Matthew believes “will revolutionize Pauline studies in future research.” The synopsis lays out parallel passages in the Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline corpus (13 letters plus Paul in Acts), as shown in this excerpt. (Note: oddly, the excerpt doesn’t have the Greek on the left and English on the right – but this appears to be a problem with the pdf layout not the book.) Synopses are certainly useful, but even more useful I’ve found is the knowledge gained by doing them yourself. All you need is a spreadsheet.

“As I was standing in line for registration N.T. Wright himself walked up and stood right next to me…. Margaret [my wife] even touched the hem of his garment. It was awesome…. I walked over to him, he’s actually a rather big guy (easily 6 foot 3) and stuck out my hand. He kindly shook while I told him how wonderful he is, and that if he only asked I would be his personal slave until Jesus comes back. He humbly turned down my offer for voluntary slavery and simply said, ‘Thank you.'”

Brian LePort (Near Emmaus) notifies us about a video of N.T. Wright’s lecture, “Revelation and Christian Hope: Political Implications of the Revelation of John” (Oct 8, Duke Divinity School). In his past writings, Wright conveniently reinterpreted the catastrophic apocalypticism in the Synoptic Gospels as though it merely involved some sort of this-worldly transformation (so as to avoid admitting that Jesus was simply mistaken in believing that the world was just about to end 2000 years ago). In a similar vein in this video, Wright follows the current trend of pretending the New Testament is a “subversive” collection of this-worldly political radicalism (despite the Revelation of John’s escape into other-worldly fantasy, in which it is pretended that a critical change has already occurred on earth as a result of believing in Jesus’ imaginary heavenly enthronement, and the concomitant introspection of the community and conservative call to effective political inaction on earth).

Students in James McGrath’s course on Revelation and its reception blog their thoughts at The Book of Revelation.

Larry Hurtado provides an ad hoc list of what he views as the most significant developments in the study of the New Testament and Christian origins over the last century or so: the “de-throning” of the textus receptus, the discovery of various papyri, new methods in text-critical analysis, greater sophistication in handling Jesus tradition, recognition of the Jewishness of Paul, a greater sense of diversity in early Christianity, a better sense of Jewish context gained in particular from the DSS and criticism of the earlier Hellenistic-Palestinian division, greater understanding of church demographics, and (with confessed self-interest) recognition of the earliness of Christ devotion. Tsalampouni Ekaterini (Ιστολόγιο βιβλικών σπουδών / Biblical Studies Blog) adds a few more: social-science and literary critical methods, ideological criticisms (e.g. postcolonial studies), the use of non-canonical texts, the role of oral tradition, and reception history studies.

Emerging Judaism

Marc Cortez (Scientia et Sapientia) summarizes Megan DeFranza’s ETS paper on “the recent trend toward understanding the human person and the imago Dei primarily through the lens of human sexuality.” The paper discusses the resulting sexualization of God. But the most important lesson I take from the summary of this paper is that biblical interpreters should be very wary of using overtly theological interpretations of the Bible by theologians, as these are usually more misleading than enlightening. In particular, the woeful interpretation of Genesis 1.27 by Karl Barth should be given a wide berth in academic biblical studies.

Lester Grabbe turned 65 on Nov 5 (which dates him, contrary to popular rumor, well after the Persian period). To celebrate the occasion, Philip Davies (pictured left) and Diana Edelman (not pictured) presented him with a Festschrift the following day, called The Historian and the Bible (T&T Clark, 2010). The collection has contributions from most of the big names in biblical fairytaleology (i.e. what used to be referred to as “biblical historiography”): Barstad, Lemche, Na’aman, Albertz, Thompson, Lemaire, Liverani, Ben Zvi, Edelman, Williamson, Lipschits, Becking, Blenkinsopp, Knoppers, Knauf, Davies, and Brooke. The ubiquitous Jim West (Zwinglius Redivivus) has the exclusive report, including photos on a couch which appears to be made from the hide of a red cow.

Jim Linville (Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shop & Tea Room) posts an extended version of his SBL paper on myth in the Old Testament, which surveys the ways in which Old Testament Introductions treat the issue. Reminiscent of Nic Wyatt’s various writings on the issue (whom he cites), Jim asks why the Old Testament is frequently seen as an exception amongst other ancient literature, as though it is somehow fundamentally different in nature. Jim argues that such an approach represents “an outdated, and rather outrageous western-centric evolutionary model of societal development.”

Carisa (Queen of Heaven) discusses Asherah, the one-time wife of Yahweh in the ancient Levant, before Yahweh took over and cleared out the other elohim from the divine council (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

Jim Linville (Dr Jim’s Thinking Room and Tea Shop) notes a new volume on various conceptions of exile found in the Hebrew Bible (Daniel Patte (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, CUP, 2010). The volume happens to include Jim’s own essay on the myth of the exilic return. Jim’s blog post also features an Ehud Ben Zvi lolcat.

John Hobbins (Ancient Hebrew Poetry) puts Yahweh’s “credo” in Israel back into the little credo of Jeremiah 2.1-3, contrary to almost all English translations of the verses which he has found. He’s right. And I add that by “reading the seams,” to adopt Adriane Leveen’s phrase, we might be less inclined to interpret ancient Hebrew literature as though it were perfectly assimilated to the context of the whole, as in a New Critical sense (a theoretical approach based on the interpretation of modern works), but rather that it has been assimilated according to quite different sensibilities. Recognizing that principle might let us see that the appearance of a suddenly unqualifiedly positive credo (Jeremiah 2.1-3) between two quite negative passages is etically not emically jarring. And reading through John’s fine post, I also noticed a possible connotative play between לולתיך (“your bridal virgin”) and לא זרועה (“not seeded”) – uncovered by his structuring of the verses.

Rebecca Lesses (Mystical Politics) reviews some of the sessions she attended, providing comments on the Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism section and the presentation of a Festschrift to her Doktormutter, Rachel Elior. David Larsen (Heavenly Ascents) provides further comments on the same section. Jim Davila (PaleoJudaica) uploads his SBL review of Peter Schäfer’s The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Mohr-Siebeck, 2009), which includes a critique of a view I have always found very odd (despite its prevalence): the view that there is no mystical experience behind these texts. Jim also provides relevant links to some of his own considerable works on Hekhalot literature and other Jewish mysticism. His paper is available as a pdf here.

Roland Boer (Stalin’s Moustache) comments on the new SBL section on the Bible and economics. He also provides an outline of one of his proposed books, to be called The Sacred Economy, which will provide a hypothetical model of the economy of ancient Judea, and which appears to involve economic analysis on a scale not seen since the composition of Das Kapital. The hypothetical economic base will in turn explain elements of the superstructure of biblical ideology – such as, for example, the Bible’s concern for fertility and its fetishistic obsession with the prostitute metaphor. If I understand his proposal, the fact that this single economic base is constituently in tension between its tributory and domestic aspects in turn furnishes homologies in biblical literature, for example in the hopelessly contradictory thought of Paul, and also in Paul’s attempts to mollify the less conservative teachings of Jesus, etc.

In a curious post, Duane Smith compiles a list of Akkadian omens from Shumma Alu in which a snake appears between a husband and a wife, refusing to draw any parallels to the story of Adam, Eve, and that serpentine agent of childbirth.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Rick Mansfield (This Lamp) relates that he has encountered many women who read the older translations of Genesis 1.27 (“God created man [האדם] in his own image”), and interpreted it as though it states that only males were created in the image of God. Rick was shocked that women might think this, and so supports the NIV 2011’s gender neutrality, as better communicating the so-called original meaning. However, it should be noted that all divine beings in the Tanach, including the male Yahweh and his male angels, were corporeal; so the “image of God” in Genesis 1.27 plausibly refers to a god with a male-shaped body, complete with, as Michael Coogan notes in his recent book (God and Sex), a God-sized penis – pace trendy yet speculative 1970s androgynous-body theories. This is also the interpretation of Paul in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 11.7), who interprets the reference to creation in the image of God in Genesis 1.27 as applicable only to males. Women, for Paul, were made in the image of men, so were only indirect reflections of God. Mind you, these conclusions are, for obvious interested reasons, hotly contested.

But taking the discussion to a different level, isn’t there something deeply farcical in debating gender equality at the level of a Bible translator’s word choices, when the content of what is being translated – the Bible – overwhelmingly upholds patriarchal, hierarchical and androcentric attitudes? That is, while gender-inclusive language is – I consider – a good in itself, when used to “translate” the Bible it inevitably masks the substantive gender bias which the Bible maintains, and thereby cloaks and perpetuates the Bible’s sexism for its modern Protestant Christian users. Is gender-inclusive language primarily an improvement for women or a means to maintain patriarchy? To answer this question, we might consider David Ker’s post at Better Bibles Blog, which includes a comparison between the NIV 1984 and NIV 2011’s translations of the overtly sexist 1 Timothy 2. David mentions that 1 Timothy 2 provides “one of the most difficult passages for handling gender in the New Testament,” and provides examples of how NIV 2011 has rendered the Greek in order to attain a “successful” gender-neutral translation. The so-called “gender-neutral” translation on which he concentrates is the translation of ἄνθρωπος as “mankind” in 1 Timothy 2.5 – compared with the TNIV’s earlier “human beings” – representative of a change rightly described by Rodney A. Thomas (Political Jesus) as “the giant step backwards in gender language.” Moreover, in concentrating on this allegedly “gender-neutral” translation, David makes no comment on the fact that the NIV 2011 has “neutrally” translated a text containing a blatant androcentric ideology, oppression and curtailment of women’s roles in the early Christian community, confinement of women to domestic spaces, not to mention a justification of women’s submission to men and an essentialization of female inferiority (see 1 Timothy 2.9-15). A curious complaint was made by “complementarian” Denny Burk, who argued that the NIV 2011’s translation of 1 Timothy 2.12 just doesn’t make man’s authority over women clear enough. Denny worries that the translation might be taken to support equality between the sexes. TCR (New Leaven) reports a reply by NIV 2011 translator Douglas Moo, who claims that the NIV 2011 adopted neither an egalitarian nor complementarian position, a claim repeated by fellow translator Craig Blomberg. Denny reiterates his position in two further posts. Related comments are made by Suzanne McCarthy (Suzanne’s Bookshelf: in twoposts) and Collin Hansen (The Gospel Coalition). Incidentally, here is the photograph of the translation committee from their website, The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT):

Such features continue to ensure that the NIV remains a devotional translation for Christian users and seminaries, not a translation for use in academic biblical studies. As Douglas Mangum (Biblia Hebraica et Graeca) summarizes: “It is clear that the translators are less interested in revealing the linguistic and literary complexity of the biblical world than with maintaining an ignorant public’s faith in the accuracy of the putative original language and text.” So one of the most important points for biblical scholarship is correctly stated by John Hobbins (Ancient Hebrew Poetry): “we regard all serious study of the biblical text to depend on intimate familiarity with the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek originals.” Another important observation which this biblioblog discussion has clearly exposed is that philology is “always already” biased and political – even though textual criticism is still widely regarded as the so-called “objective” stage before potentially biased interpretations are seen as kicking in. Yet this conclusion does not entail that all textual criticism is simply equally biased. The NIV certainly has flaws, but the translation is far better in most ways than, for example, The New World Translation.

Daniel and Tonya (Hebrew and Greek Reader) share their lexical entry for the preposition תחת, which often means “under,” but a few other things as well. Not only do they have a nice diagram of the semantic range made out of differently sized circles and connecting lines, but they also have some “frame semantic diagrams.”

ASOR media committee member, Jim West (Zwinglius Redivivus) reveals a new page on The Bible and Interpretation which announces reviews of TV programs and films featuring the Bible or ancient Near East. The page is available here, and already includes links to the NOVA special “Quest for King Solomon’s mines” (links which return you back to the uncanny Jim West, here and here).

S. Brent Plate (The Revealer) discovers a manga called Seinto oniisan – which is about the lives of Jesus and Buddha, “who take a vacation from otherworldly life to shack up together in the Tokyo suburb, Nachikawa.”

Frank Schaeffer discusses Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series, Evangelicals, Republicans, the Tea Party, and Revelation, and the effects produced by their self-image as “righteous outsiders.”

Horace Jeffery Hodges (Gypsy Scholar) traces the metaphor of all-devouring death from English 16th/17th-century poet John Donne back to the devouring of death itself in 1 Corinthians 15 and Isaiah 25, while making mention of the devouring Satan of 1 Peter 5.8. The metaphor of devouring Death also makes appearances at Ugarit (ca. 1200 BCE), where Mōtu’s (Death’s) hungry mouth is portrayed as the entrance to the netherworld (KTU 1.5 ii 2ff (“the Ba’al Cycle”, tablet 5, column 2, lines 2 and following)), and in Egyptian iconography, where the part-crocodile Ammut is portrayed as devouring the unworthy dead.

Roland Boer (Stalin’s Moustache) provides an English translation of the name of famed New Testament professor, “Ernst Knauf Käsemann.” It turns out his name roughly translates as “the Grave Knobcheese Man.”

Hi Dean, thanks for the shout out about my post on the Pope’s new book over at Women In Theology. One correction, though: Those egregious comments about the evidence for the historical Jesus were made by the guy interviewing the Pope, Peter Seewald, and not by the Pope himself.

Thanks for an incredibly (almost literally) comprehensive carnival! I hope all that hard work really gets rewarded in quantity (as well as quality) of visitors Thanks too for mentioning my podcast, which often seems to be overlooked.

Re: “isn’t there something deeply farcical in debating gender equality at the level of a Bible translator’s word choices, when the content of what is being translated – the Bible – overwhelmingly upholds patriarchal, hierarchical and androcentric attitudes?”

As one who has thought a lot about the methodology of “gender-sensitive” translation, I will reply that the answer is no. That is, provided that a translation is supposed to reflect how a text expresses its points. An utterance’s wording and its message are two different (albeit overlapping) things. If a text uses gender-nonexclusive Hebrew wording to convey “patriarchal, hierarchical and androcentric attitudes” (as, arguably, the Hebrew Bible often does), then a rendering into another language are surely justified in reflecting that aspect of the Hebrew word choice.

Indeed, I would say that translators have the responsibility to do so. Otherwise the translation misrepresents the source text as being more male-oriented in its wording than it actually is.

P.S. Thanks for this post. I learned a lot from it — and bookmarked many of the linked sites.

However, for the receiver as not merely a reader but also as a user of a text, does the energy of the debate over biblical gender tend to mask these more substantive issues? That is, is there an effect of ‘something is being done about the problem’ which is in reality superficial? Is such a thing not ‘farce’?

Admittedly there is a lot of smoke, but truly there is also fire. The fire arises from the numerous biblical scholars who misconstrue Hebrew grammatical masculine inflections in general, and masculine human nouns in particular: they insist that it means that only men are in view, or that the biblical authors were employing a male model as a representative human being. In my view, a carefully prepared gender-sensitive translation helps to “smoke out” and counter such linguistic nonsense.

In short, behind the translation controversies are some real issues not only over translation per se, but also over what the Hebrew actually means.

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(It’ll be so great to follow the links after grading is complete. Say about January 2.)